UK, Canada Make Push for Facebook Fake News Testimony

Lawmakers plan to form a so-called international grand committee to question Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about disinformation and fake news on the platform.

by Rex Crum, The Mercury News
/
October 31, 2018

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
Shutterstock

(TNS) — Mark Zuckerberg has testified to the U.S. Congress. Could a visit before U.K. and Canadian lawmakers be next?

That’s what parliamentary committees in Britain and Canada want, and they are urging Zuckerberg to show up and testify before a joint hearing of international lawmakers that are investigating fake news and how it is spread on the internet.

In a letter sent to Zuckerberg Wednesday, Damian Collins, chairman of the United Kingdom’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee, and Bob Zimmer, chairman of the Canadian Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, said they plan a joint parliamentary hearing Nov. 7 to form an “‘international grand committee’ on disinformation and fake news.”

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Collins said the nature of the hearing is such that other nations’ parliaments will also be represented at the meeting.

Last week, the U.K.’s national privacy regulator fined Facebook $645,000 for what it called “serious” violations of data protection rules that helped lead to the Cambridge Analytica scandal at Facebook.